Six Honest Serving-Men
The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students by Jenny L. Presnell. Oxford University Press (New York City) 256 pp., $17.95 paper 2006I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And...
Morality in History and Historiography
Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American Civil War by Harry S. Stout. Viking Penguin (New York) 576 pp., $29.95 cloth, 2006 Harry Stout, the Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History at Yale University, has written another...
Toward a Conservative Conservation Movement
Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground by Eric T. Freyfogle. Yale University Press (New Haven, Conn.) 302 pp., $37.00 cloth, 2006Environmental conservation has moved from the margin to the political mainstream in recent decades. However, despite the...
Despotism Justified
Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture by Richard Pipes. Yale University Press (New Haven, Conn.) 216pp., $30.00 cloth, 2006 In Russian Conservatism, Richard Pipes gives a masterful introduction to several hundred years of Russian political...
Heaven on Earth or Hell’s Dress Rehearsal
Isaac Newton’s Philosophy of Sacred Space and Sacred Time: An Essay on the History of an Idea by Gregory Gillette The Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, N.Y.) 119 pp., $99.95 cloth, 2007 The material universe fully encompasses reality. Upon this premise rests a trendy...A Foreign Policy for (Probably Not Very Many) Americans
“Men of Kalidu, the centuries look down upon you!” So cried His Excellency, Manfred Arcane,Minister Without Portfolio to his Mightiness Achmet XI, Hereditary President of Hamnegri and Sultan in Kalidu. This day the wise and virtuous Minister, confidential servant to...
‘And Therefore as Stranger Give It Welcome’
Russell Kirk’s Ghostly Fiction Invites Us to Embrace and Live the MysteryIf I say the word “ghost” at a polite gathering (coffeehouse, cocktail party, a friend’s wedding reception), some will recoil, albeit perhaps only slightly. How, they’ll ask with polite but...
The Sword of Education
Of the voluminous corpus of Russell Kirk’s writings, no small amount concerns the subject of education. Kirk counted in his memoirs that over a span of five decades he had authored “some hundreds of essays, articles, and newspaper columns,” as well as three books...From Tradition to ‘Values Conservatism’
A Sympathetic Critic’s View of Kirk’s LegacyI suspect I might have been asked to join this distinguished company for a very specific reason. Unlike most of the other contributors, I am not considered entirely in agreement with my subject. This certainly does not mean...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!